Four grown kids, five delightful grandchildren, constant, long-time partner. A retired academic, I'm adapting to life in a Vancouver condo after decades in a waterfront home on a very small (Canadian) West Coast island. Keen to discover what new priorities emerge, what interests persist, in this urban life after 60!

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Friday, January 8, 2016

More Alaia, More Borghese, More Rome . . .

I'm in Vancouver again right now; it's not quite 6 a.m. as I'm writing this, and I'm meeting my sister for a run in half an hour. I have Five Things jostling 'round in my fingers right now, itching to get keyboarded into a Five Things Friday post, but they will have to wait until later in the day.

However, I promised to reveal a secret I've been keeping from you, and since I'd already uploaded this photos from the Couture/Sculpture show of Alaïa garments at Rome's Borghese Galleria earlier this week, I though I could put together a quick announcement.

The dress, by the way. Swoon-y or a bit creepy depending on your response to crocodile skin (never mind your feelings about your waist. . . I think I'm on the swoony side myself, having very little sympathy for the croc. Sorry. . . this just seems a good twist on "never smile at a crocodile . . . .he's imagining how well you'd fit within his skin," for those of you who've seen Disney's Peter Pan. (although some of you may argue that this skin looks far too supple ever to have housed a crocodile, and you might suggest snakeskin. . . in which case my sentiments are similar, but the song lyrics don't work.)

Anyway. The good guessers among you will have put 2 and 2 together by now, especially since I said last post that my secret concerns this daughter: Yes! I'm heading to Rome again, this time all by myself, for two weeks, before the end of the month. I just couldn't stand being away from my granddaughter so long at such a bonding stage of our lives together, and if there was anything worth retiring for, it's having the freedom to travel when I want. (Of course, the unfortunate corollary is the lowered funds for doing so, but frugalities have been exercised. . . .)

More to follow. And I still intend to get Five Things published on Friday. But for now, that's my news, and now I'm off running. Have a lovely day! That's an order ;-)

28 comments:

OMG! Way to use retirement in just the perfect fashion! Have an awesome time, like there's any other sort of time to be had while getting the hell out of Canada and going to Southern Europe in January. Please, eat all of the pasta for me.

Yes, I'll admit that sometimes I have second thoughts about having retired (although I honestly didn't have the energy to keep at it and be a positive person elsewhere), but that being able (finally!) to travel other than in summer is a definite perk. . .I'll eat most of it, but I'll try to leave a bit for your next visit ;-)

Great! I really travelled a lot during my first four years of retirement and I'm making some economies now. Your little one will love the together time. I just picked up the second Elena Ferrante book after finishing the latest Louise Penny. Have you watched the Julie Delpy movie about the French relatives visiting NYC? I watched it on Netflix last night and it was really funny. We will await your next trip.

I'm thrilled for you Frances! I know how I'd feel if I was you ... and imagine you're feeling the same! Just bursting with excitement! As I'm sure Rhiannon and her little family are too!!Sorry I haven't commented for a while, just a time thing. I always look forward to your posts and settling down to read them.Have a wonderful time!Rosie

You are doing the right thing! Have a wonderful time!The dress is stunning, but it does give me the creeps. Not out of sympathy for the crocodile, mind you. It is just the human attitude to walk into nature and grab anything bautiful off its creatures to turn it into his own design which makes me shudder. Excuse the preaching.

Thanks, Eleonore! And no need to excuse what you say, which really doesn't come across as preachy. I don't see how we can respond to the dress -- as art, the way it's posed here, or as Fashion/Style -- without responding at some level to the use of the material and the boundary it evokes between the human and other beings. Personally, I find it a beautiful use of a very particular material, but it's also very provocative in any use of that word. And even if I could afford it, I'd never buy nor wear it. But I'd carry a crocodile-skin purse if I could afford it, or wear a croc-skin watchband. I wonder if Alaïa thought about these issues, cared about this debate. . . much of our early clothing, as tribal peoples, included animal skins out of necessity. . . provocative, as I say. . .

Oh, winter in Rome - and spending time with your daughter and granddaughter! I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time. That dress is divine. Not sure about the crocodile skin, but wouldn't it be gorgeous in a heavy brocade? Rosemary

I think it would, Rosemary, and then it would be much less provocative (and have a completely different sexual charge, don't you think?). The brocade would have to be tone-on-tone, though, not to distract by colour change, and the print would have to be subdued. But a good brocade would have the weight to make the dress's scuptural structure work, as the crocodile skin does.

Winter in Rome will have such a different feel than in the summer. I'm so glad you are able to go visit your daughter and granddaughter for a couple of weeks. I love the dress, although I feel the same as you regarding crocodile vs snakeskin.

I wondered what the sewers in this community might think about the dress -- if you sewed it up in heavy brocade as Rosemary suggests, there'd be some fascinating play to do with the grain to get that marvelously full skirt, so many pieces would have to be cut on the bias, I'm guessing. . . .

Fabulous news! Enjoy. I think winter in Rome has its own joy, and fabulous daughter and granddaughter will only increase said joy exponentially. I love the pictures too and the dress. I have no qualms about crocodile as a garment material, but perhaps not a dress. I love looking at the pictures though.

Thanks, Mardel. Of course, the price points of a dress of crocodile skin render this a completely moot decision for me, but I'd happily wear the right pair of leather pants if I could find and afford them (have before, my lifestyle now hardly suits). I find it interesting that the dress as displayed (or as I've presented it here) raises these questions -- to me that testifies to its disturbing power and thus to Fashion Design's power to do some of the work that Art has always done. Besides the question of animal rights, there's the whole question of labour and class and capital and why/how some spend so much on garments, etc. And the undeniable beauty of the structure and texture. . .

I'd love to hear your response to my post. Agree, disagree, even go off on a tangent, I love to know you're out there, readers. Let's chat, shall we? I apologize, though, for the temporary necessity of the Word Verification -- spam comments have been tiresomely numerous lately, and I'm hoping to break that pattern.

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Wisdom to live by and Other Clever Quotations

Events are not changeable at their climax, not through virtue and resolve, but only in their strictly ordinary, habitual course through reason and practice.Walter Benjamin, "The Author as Producer," Address delivered at the Institute for the Study of Fascism, Paris, on 27 April 1934

Coherence is born of random abundance. Kim Stafford in The Muses Among UsThe world is so full of a number of thingsI'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses

Bourgeois heroism: the acrobatics of being in so many places practically at once, and doing so many amazing things in one day, and then conversing over dinner with unflagging energy.

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